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Imagery
Definition of Irony
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this seems like a loose definition... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how... read full definition
Act 1
Explanation and Analysis—Fog of Intellect:
In the first act, Mariya Vasilyevna, Voynitsky's mother, laments that Voynitsky has changed a lot in the past year. She begins to say that he used to be "a man of definite convictions, a man of enlightenment," until Voynitsky interrupts her. Contrasting light with obscurity, he uses a metaphor to ironically describe intellect as a fog:
Oh yes! I was a man of enlightenment, who gave no one any light...
[…]
I am now forty-seven. Till last year, like you, I deliberately tried to cloud my eyes with your learned talk, so as not to see real life – and I thought I was doing right.
When Mariya Vasilyevna uses the word "enlightenment" to describe her son, she means it in the intellectual sense. Voynitsky used to care about learning, but disillusionment with Serebryakov and his work has led him to abandon the pursuit of knowledge. Seizing on the multiple meanings of enlightenment, Voynitsky addresses the irony of seeking enlightenment without giving brightness to other people. Throughout the play, he charges Serebryakov with doing just that. Voynitsky despairs that he has wasted a substantial portion of his life devoted to the Professor's empty, egotistical intellectualism.
He then goes on to elaborate on intellectualism as the opposite of illumination through a metaphor. Saying that he used to "cloud" his eyes with "learned talk," which he claims his mother and other disciples of Serebryakov still do, he compares intellectual study to obscurity. Acting as a fog, this intellectual study has the ironic effect of clouding one's vision. As a result, learning results in the opposite of awareness and knowledge—a professor's supposed goals.
Through this metaphor, Voynitsky reflects on the irony of studying so hard you forget to open your eyes and participate in the world around you. He feels a great deal of bitterness over this irony because he has wasted precious years unquestioningly swept up in the Professor's work. Citing his age, Vanya expresses that he feels old and regrets that he "lost the time when [he] could have had everything that [his] age now denies [him]."
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